Margaret and Mr. Lyon were much together.

And their talk, as always happens when two persons find themselves much together, became more and more personal.  It is only in books that dialogues are abstract and impersonal.  The Englishman told her about his family, about the set in which he moved—­and he had the English frankness in setting it out unreservedly—­about the life he led at Oxford, about his travels, and so on to what he meant to do in the world.  Margaret in return had little to tell, her own life had been so simple—­not much except the maidenly reserves, the discontents with herself, which interested him more than anything else; and of the future she would not speak at all.  How can a woman, without being misunderstood?  All this talk had a certain danger in it, for sympathy is unavoidable between two persons who look ever so little into each other’s hearts and compare tastes and desires.

“I cannot quite understand your social life over here,” Mr. Lyon was saying one day.  “You seem to make distinctions, but I cannot see exactly for what.”

“Perhaps they make themselves.  Your social orders seem able to resist Darwin’s theory, but in a republic natural selection has a better chance.”

“I was told by a Bohemian on the steamer coming over that money in America takes the place of rank in England.”

“That isn’t quite true.”

“And I was told in Boston by an acquaintance of very old family and little fortune that ‘blood’ is considered here as much as anywhere.”

“You see, Mr. Lyon, how difficult it is to get correct information about us.  I think we worship wealth a good deal, and we worship family a good deal, but if any one presumes too much upon either, he is likely to come to grief.  I don’t understand it very well myself.”

“Then it is not money that determines social position in America?”

“Not altogether; but more now than formerly.  I suppose the distinction is this:  family will take a person everywhere, money will take him almost everywhere; but money is always at this disadvantage—­it takes more and more of it to gain position.  And then you will find that it is a good deal a matter of locality.  For instance, in Virginia and Kentucky family is still very powerful, stronger than any distinction in letters or politics or success in business; and there is a certain diminishing number of people in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, who cultivate a good deal of exclusiveness on account of descent.”

“But I am told that this sort of aristocracy is succumbing to the new plutocracy.”